NFA fullback perseveres after youth football injury

As the knee pad was cut from Khaleed Exum-Strong’s right leg while he lay in bed at Backus Hospital in Norwich, he stared down to finally see what gruesome injury awaited him.

Brett Poirier

NORWICH — As the knee pad was cut from Khaleed Exum-Strong’s right leg while he lay in bed at Backus Hospital in Norwich, he stared down to finally see what gruesome injury awaited him.

The then eighth-grader saw his kneecap shifted to the side and his femur jutting out from the side of his knee.

“It was dislocated and snapped,” Exum-Strong said. “but, I was just thinking about the game. I was thinking I really wanted to play, and I was wondering how I was still going to play football.”

That was how the Norwich Free Academy fullback’s youth football career ended. It was Nov. 7, 2010 and Norwich played at Plainfield in the Southern New England Youth Football Conference semifinals. With Plainfield ahead, 8-0, Exum-Strong took a carry up the right side, broke several tackles, before a helmet struck the side of his knee and he fell to the cold ground screaming. Through the pain, all Exum-Strong could think about was leading his team to the youth football Super Bowl.

“The bone is sticking out of his knee and he is just telling me he wants to stay and play,” Norwich Senior coach Jim Shutt said after the game. “I don’t know what else to say. There are tears coming out of my eyes because I don’t know what to do.”

Shutt, who stood over Exum-Strong, admitted later that he wasn’t sure if his best player would ever play again.

NFA junior running back Marcus Outlow, one of Exum-Strong’s closest friends, arrived at the field right before the injury.

“I saw it when they tried to get him up and I was just speechless,” Outlow said. “I couldn’t say anything. I’m real good friends with his mom and his sister. We’re basically family, and it was just crazy seeing their reaction. It was tough, but he has come along way.”

Tough running

Exum-Strong doesn’t run like a player who has broken his femur in such a ghastly fashion. In fact, his teammates on the NFA football team nicknamed him “The Animal” because of the toughness and tenacity he brings to the table.

While Outlow uses his speed and agility to break to the outside, Exum-Strong, a sophomore, prefers to lower his shoulder and head right for his opponents.

“Some programs have talked about a lightning and thunder,” NFA coach Jemal Davis said. “I think we have our complement of that in Marcus and Khaleed. We want to make sure that (Exum-Strong) continues to get better because as he gets better, we get better.”

And there’s no doubt that he has got better. Exum-Strong spent most of his first season on the freshman team, but he got a taste of football at the varsity level at the end of his rookie campaign with the Wildcats.

“This offseason he was just putting up weight (in the weight room) and just showing who he was going to be and he’s not even close to being done yet,” Outlow said.

The biggest stride Exum-Strong made in the offseason was in blocking. On most plays, he is the unsung hero, opening holes for Outlow.

“I never blocked a day in my life,” Exum-Strong said about before arriving at NFA. “In youth football, I was the running back.”

And while Exum-Strong can provide a spark out the backfield, and give the Wildcats up to 15 carries a game this season, it was his blocking that turned the heads of the Wildcats’ coaches during his freshman season.

The early call-up put Exum-Strong in impressive company as Outlow and seniors Ryer Caruso and Joey Paparelli all came up as freshmen as well.

“This year, he is a tremendous blocker,” Outlow said with a laugh. “I need him a lot, I’m not even going to say I don’t.”

Outlow called it “a miracle” that Exum-Strong recovered from an injury the junior still vividly remembers today. Exum-Strong remembers it, too. He remembers the surgery at Connecticut Children’s Hospital and the incredibly quick recovery (about two months) that he made.

More than anything though, he remembers that game as being the biggest of his life up to that point.

“That was the game, I had never made it that far ever,” Exum-Strong said.

With the 9-0 Wildcats, however, he has a chance to do so much more, and his tough running has been instrumental. On Thanksgiving Day, the Wildcats will take on New London with a chance to complete a perfect regular season, while also carrying momentum into the state playoffs.

It will also be a homecoming of sorts for Exum-Strong, who was born in New London and started his youth football career there. He said playing the Whalers will be like going up against his “family.”

The Whalers defenders had best prepare for contact, because there is little doubt that if he has the ball or is blocking for Outlow, he is going to lower his shoulder and head right at them. He has proven in the past that nothing is going to get in his way.

“He kind of surprises me,” Outlow said. “I have a year left and I’ve kind of been thinking that I’m doing big things, but this guy — he’s learning from everybody else, so he is just going to gather that up and be really good.”